Mast Raising

2014 saw a major 10 year refit for Halcyon.

After concerns of the weight of the Honnor Marine mast I chose to replace my mast with a Noble hollow mast.

Looking back with hindsight (a wonderful thing!) I should have repaired the original South African mast which was also hollow. However this split for 3/4 of its length and on investigation had not been glued correctly.

Up until now I have always manually got the mast up the hard way- with the wife or children holding onto the genoa halyard and me lifting the mast from the cockpit.

However for single handed trailer sailing this is fraught with danger and could cause catastrophe if a slip occurred to both person and the boat.

As a result I have made a lifting device.

This utilises a replacement bolt through the tabernacle with a eye ring on either side.

A fork engages in both rings which is held in an old piece of mast I had (which was included in my Drascombe Longboat for no apparent use).

On the other end of this two eyes are located- one is used to connect to the genoa halyard which is then tied to a cleat I have added to the tabernacle, the other is connected to a 6:1 block and tackle. This is connected to the forestay fitting on the boat by a quick release carbine clip.

The line is then fed back through one of the halyard clutches. The winch can then be used to winch up the mast in a very controlled manner.

The beauty of this design is that:

1) The fulcrum of the tabernacle is used as the pivot point of the mast

2) The mast is lifted along the centreline of the boat, thereby no sidewards forces are exerted onto the boats fittings.

Another way of raising the mast could be by using the bowsprit.

However, this has to be finely tuned to avoid ripping out the bowsprit fitting as the bowsprit is off centre line to the mast.

By using the arrangement I have designed less than 5 minutes are added to the rigging time.